


And if you Wrong Us...

by Magz (sparklepocalypse)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Sam/Dean if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 15:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4527729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklepocalypse/pseuds/Magz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death comes knocking and the Winchesters answer.  A dark trio of possible outcomes after <i>Supernatural</i> 1x22 'Devil's Trap'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And if you Wrong Us...

 

  
**1.**

They take him back to Lawrence.

Dean is silent as he bears down on the shovel, watching the blade bite down into muddy sod. He very carefully doesn't look to his left, where Sam's swaying on his feet, seconds away from collapsing onto the ground. The large stone in front of him is blurred in his peripheral vision as he stares at the ground.

They've dug up dozens of graves since they were children and somehow it'd never seemed obscene. But as the shovel pierces down into the soil, Dean feels like he might be sick.

Sam's knees buckle and as he lands hard on the damp ground, the cardboard box he's been clutching slips out of his hands and falls on its side but doesn't open. He reaches for it with trembling fingers, and as he picks it up a sob rends the air.

No longer silent, Dean digs down deeper. And then he, too, is on his knees, clutching himself even as Sam clutches the box, rocking slightly as he presses the heel of his hand to his forehead.

Mary Winchester, 1959-1983.

There'll be no stone for John. No money to buy one as it is; the thought of using a stolen credit card to pay for one seems somehow repulsive.

Dean wipes his face with muddy hands, smearing dirt and tears across his pale cheeks. He tries to stand once. Stumbles. Crosses the distance between himself and Sam on his hands and knees when his legs refuse to work and he's not sure if he even wants to stand, anyway, because Dad never will again.

 

Later, Sam will sit on the edge of his bed, frozen in place halfway through dragging off his shirt. He'll stare blankly at the television as a newscaster speaks about a mysterious fire that's killed a woman in her six-month-old's nursery and that the infant's body wasn't recovered.

Dean will sit in the corner of the shower and rock slightly as the hot water turns his shoulders, neck, arms and legs first pink, then increasingly redder. He'll hear the news report through the gap between the bottom of the bathroom door and the floor, gasping for air as a phantom fist constricts his throat.

Sam will eventually haul him out of the shower and prop him against the wall while he carefully towels him off, because even the softest terrycloth will be too coarse for his scalded skin. He'll shut off the water and help Dean walk to bed because when it's just them Dean isn't too proud to admit he's still weak.

The bed will dip when Sam climbs in beside Dean, and they'll curve together and breathe into each other's mouths and pretend it's sweat, not tears they taste when they inhale.

 

**2.**

Not even the best doctors in the state could've saved him. At least, that's what _this_ doctor says. Nobody can save you if your body just... gives up.

Sam is vaguely aware of the doctor saying things like _too much internal damage_ and _did all we could_ ; _sorry for your loss_ as he stares down at the person -- the _shell_ of a person -- looking small and pale and broken and hollow on the hospital bed. It looks like Dean. Probably smells like Dean. But it won't ever laugh like Dean or fight like Dean or talk like Dean or run like Dean, ever, ever again. He squeezes his eyes shut as his hand hovers over the body's chest.

Something rears up inside Sam then, sliding over his subconscious, and it snaps into place with a click he's sure is echoing through the room. Blood rushes in his ears and his eyes open to greet a whirlwind. Papers, equipment, and furniture all spin around the room, fast as lightning. In the middle of the chaos, just as still, just as dead, lies Dean, untouched by the objects flying past him above and below the bed.

He doesn't hear the shouts of his name. Doesn't register the other person in the room with him until strong fingers grip his shoulder firmly and whirl him around.

Dad's fist connects with his face, and as his head snaps back everything slows and drifts back to its rightful place. He's shaking, or maybe it's Dad who's shaking him. Then he's crying and Dad's crying and maybe the doctors are sorry but they won't be the only ones.

All that was good inside Sam was put there by Dean, after all.

 

Sam will disappear from the hospital that night. He won't answer any of John's frantic phone calls as he stalks the demon that took his brother. For three whole years, he'll hone that _thing_ inside his head until it's more deadly than any weapon he's ever wielded.

With the demon's screams still echoing in his ears and spots dancing behind his eyes from the flash of brilliant light following its vanquishment, he'll call John. And softly, because he's not spoken aloud since That Night, he'll ask if he can come home now.

 

**3.**

John can't breathe.

Not because there's a bullet hole in his thigh or because the demon hadn't exactly left him in good shape when it'd finished possessing him, but because since he woke up to a world of pain and the sound of Dean's wheezing breaths in the backseat, Sam hasn't moved. Not once.

Dean's breathing takes on a wet, sucking quality and as John turns in his seat to check on him Sam _does_ move, but only to slump over the steering wheel. John's vision blurs as he looks back at his older son, whose face is pale under all that blood. He turns back around and shoves the door open, gripping the side of the car as the door falls off and he pulls himself from the wreckage.

His head is pounding and his right leg doesn't cooperate, so he drags himself around the car and all he can think is Dean, he has to save Dean. He yanks on the door handle and opens it, falling to his knees beside the car and grabbing Dean's hand. It's cool and clammy in his. He reaches up and pats Dean's face. His fingers come away sticky with his son's blood, like many times before -- but it'd never been like this.

A shift of movement then, as Dean stirs and his eyelids flutter. John lets out a sob of relief when Dean's throat works and he mutters something. Then Dean's eyes focus on the figure of his brother slumped forward in the front seat and in a burst of sheer adrenaline, he's stumbling out of the car, yanking open the driver's side door, and grabbing Sam by the shoulders. As Dean shakes his little brother and shouts his name in increasingly frantic tones even as his legs falter and he lands hard on his knees, John's fumbling for his cell phone.

 

Six months from now, his voice shaking as he reads, John will stand over a corpse on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere as he recites the incantation that will bind the demon and send it back to hell, forever. Dean will crouch several yards away, whispering to a thin circlet of black leather before digging a hole with his knife and placing the leather inside. John will look up when he's done, and watch Dean touch Sam's bracelet reverently, then cover it over with gravel.

John will help Dean to his feet and wait for him to pick up the Colt. Dean'll hand the revolver to John, who will turn it over and over in his hands before rearing back and hurling it as far as he can into the lightening landscape.

And as the sun crests the horizon, a farmer will look up from his field to see two men disappear around a curve in the road.


End file.
